Many businesses provide disbursements, such as refunds and rebates, to consumers after certain transactions are performed on that consumer's account. For example, a consumer can receive a refund after a friend signs a contract with the consumer's service provider (e.g., cable TV) or a bank can issue rewards after a certain dollar amount is charged on a credit card. Additionally, when a consumer returns goods that they purchased from the merchant, the consumer may choose to receive a refund, rebate, or other disbursement. Similarly, the consumer may expect a recurring rebate from a business, like an insurance company.
Presently, when businesses provide these disbursements to a consumer, a large amount of processing is required to track the value of the disbursement and issue a check or prepaid debit card, such as shown in FIG. 1. The business 101 is required to then mail the check or card 102 to a consumer 103 each time that a disbursement is issued. Not only does this require additional manpower and processing power to provide a physical payment of the value to the consumer, but additional funding is often required in order to purchase the paper, printers, prepaid cards, envelopes and postage.
The aforementioned process is not only burdensome for the businesses issuing the disbursements, but also for the consumer who is required to conduct a transaction, e.g., go to a bank, to deposit a check and keep track of the check and/or numerous prepaid cards received.
Another problem with existing disbursement systems is that different businesses provide different types of disbursements. For example, one type of business may provide for a prepaid card as a disbursement, another business may provide a check as a disbursement, while another may provide a coupon as a disbursement. In this case, a consumer may receive a number of different disbursements in different forms, and this is inconvenient for the consumer.
Accordingly, a system is needed which can streamline the disbursement process and which is convenient for both the issuing businesses as well as the consumers, reducing processing requirements and load on system resources.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.